The EU is big enough that companies like Microsoft will find a way to offer their services legally, and if they wouldn't, it would be a huge opportunity to EU based competitors. It's not like we don't have any software companies in the EU.
Also, there's no reason that collaboration tools must be hosted on a US cloud. Especially Microsoft traditionally provided tools for their customers to host their own infrastructure -- it's only a recent phenomenon that everything is hosted by the vendor themselves.
I think you’re right. Microsoft is perfectly able to split its operations. They’re doing it now in China in a much more drastic fashion, and they seem to have been preparing to do it in Europe for a few years now.
Just that two ships are departing from a location does not mean they heading in the same direction.
It is true that both the EU and China are swiftly heading away from this unprecedented era of technology companies being able to act as they please abroad without impunity. It is an era that the US, which benefits from this arrangement greatly, understandably does not want to leave.
But what matters is why they are doing this, not that they are doing it. And in that regard it is much harder to find similarities.
"protectionism" is morally neutral to anyone except a hegemon. A nation can decide to protect itself from free expression and abolition of slavery just as it can protect itself from unsafe food imports and price dumping. It all depends on who is being protected from what.
You know exactly what kind of protectionism we are talking about here: economic protectionism. The kind that has to be employed by a decaying empire whose populist, anti-entrepreneurial, anti-business and anti-innovation policies led to it losing the high-tech race and now instead of working together for progress is walling itself off to dream of the memory of its lost glory.
It says quite a lot about American imperialism, actually. These developments were basically guaranteed the moment the CLOUD act passed, and after the adventures Microsoft had with the DoE.
Also, there's no reason that collaboration tools must be hosted on a US cloud. Especially Microsoft traditionally provided tools for their customers to host their own infrastructure -- it's only a recent phenomenon that everything is hosted by the vendor themselves.